Evergreening seeks to extend drug patent period in one or the other way.
Q. What is ‘evergreening’ in relation to the drug patents?- Published on 25 Feb 16a. It involves extending duration of patents by dubious methods
b. It involves converting patents to generic drugs to make them available to all
c. It refers to process of reducing price of patented drugs to make them available to all
d. It refers allowing all to make the patented drug.
ANSWER: It involves extending duration of patents by dubious methods
- Evergreening is achieved by seeking extra patents on variations of the original drug – new forms of release, new dosages, new combinations or variations, or new forms.
- Big pharmas makes new drugs. Their useful new drugs are patented, protecting them from competition and allowing them to charge high prices. When the patent ends, other companies are allowed to supply the previously patented drug. These are known as generics. The prices of generic drugs are much lower than the prices of in-patent drugs.
- Evergreening refers to a variety of legal and business strategies by which technology producers with patents over products that are about to expire retain royalties from them, by either taking out new patents (for example over associated delivery systems, or new pharmaceutical mixtures), or by buying out or frustrating competitors, for longer periods of time than would normally be permissible under the law.
- This will keep the generics off the market and will help big pharmas earn more. This will however drive the costs higher for the public.
- It is most common in the pharmaceutical industry where ever-greening of drug patents is done through minor modifications of an existing drug.
- According to Section 3(d), in Indian Patent Laws, besides novelty and inventive step, improvement in therapeutic efficacy is a must for grant of patents when it comes to incremental inventions.
